During the last century, science managed to make gigantic leaps in understanding how the human brain functions. Unfortunately, the majority of the most significant experiments and researches were carried out on Nazi captives, within the dark halls of concentration camps. Cutting through people’s brains and exposing them to highly inhumane stimulations showed us a lot about how we think, memorize, perceive, etc. Thankfully the era where scalps are opened without anesthesia is long gone, and we now use much less physically invasive tech to learn about human behaviour, traits and brain rhythms. Details about neuronal activity are now collected (semi-)directly through technologies that can read and monitor brainwaves, and in-depth analysis of yourself is then done through complex algorithms. All that ‘chatter’ you hear about services like Facebook and Twitter, or devices, such as some of Bose’s headphones , alleging records of copious amounts of personal data, is not just chatter, but a multi-billion dollar business. Nowadays, it is barely needed to have a brain scanner attached to your skull for someone to extract cues of what you are thinking, or how you behave. While some of this evolution in research methods is very beneficial in medical and clinical contexts, there are immeasurable privacy risks and human rights concerns. Researchers duo Marcello Ienca and Roberto Andorno, a neuroethicist and a human rights lawyers, respectively, just published a research paper on the “new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology”. The work is part of the Life Sciences, Society… [Read full story]